Chapter 10 – The Yearning for Silence
He was seventeen.
And by then, the world had no more names to give him.
He had already rewritten history.
By age twelve, he had served as the youngest Secretary-General in United Nations history, brokered peace in war-torn nations, and established a global alliance to abolish child slavery.
By thirteen, he had built over a thousand wells in East Africa, and fifty-two hospitals across the world's poorest cities.
By fourteen, he had stopped ivory trade across three continents by exposing smuggling routes and funding wildlife rehabilitation.
By fifteen, he had personally visited over four hundred orphanages, setting up education trusts that would run for the next two centuries.
And by sixteen, he was richer than any sovereign nation.
A god in music, art, science, diplomacy, technology, economics and every profession possible.
But none of it brought him peace.
None of it brought them back.
No amount of applause could fill the hollow place where their voices used to be.
No throne could comfort a boy who once only wanted his mother to hold him.
And no mirror could reflect who he truly was—because even he didn't know anymore.
He couldn't cry.
He couldn't sleep.
He couldn't breathe.
So one quiet morning—before sunrise—Long Haochen sat his four sisters at the family estate's courtyard. No servants. No reporters. No cameras.
Just the five of them. Like it used to be.
And he bowed.
Truly bowed.
Not out of politeness, but out of surrender.
"I need to go," he said, his voice steady but low.
"Just for three years. I want to see what it means to be ordinary. To laugh. To be unknown. To fail… and not have it end up on a magazine."
His sisters froze.
Pearl, the strongest, opened her mouth—but no words came.
Jade lowered her eyes. Crystal clenched her fists.
Emerald… just whispered, "Do you promise you'll come back?"
He nodded.
"I'm not running away. I'm just… resting.
I've been the world's light for too long. Let me be human again."
And so the plan was born.
A fabricated wound—a rare, unnamed condition that required total retreat and three years of silence. His sisters announced it to the media tearfully, playing their roles with aching grace.
The world mourned.
Global holidays were declared in his honor.
Statues were built.
A special "Haochen Relief Fund" was created.
The UN offered to preserve his position until his return.
And yet…
No one knew where he went.
He gave up the penthouse, the estates, the companies,the titles.
Everything was entrusted to his sisters, who swore to preserve it until he came back.
And then—on a gray winter morning—he left the world stage behind…
…and stepped off a small flight in Seoul, South Korea.
Waiting at the gate was a quiet, middle-aged man with strong shoulders and warm, unreadable eyes.
"Uncle," Haochen said.
"Thank you for taking me in."
His uncle only nodded, then handed him a student backpack—worn, modest, plain black. Inside were three things:
1. A new school uniform.
2. A secondhand phone.
3. A notebook with a hand-written message:
"Find out who you are when no one is watching."
"Not Perfect. Just Human."
The plane touched down.
There were no bodyguards. No red carpet. No orchestra playing his arrival.
Only cold wind,
and a boy with too much inside him
walking forward with too little in his hands.
He changed his face.
Not with surgery—he didn't need that.
He simply let go of perfection.
He let the light leave his skin.
He let a scar remain on his cheek.
He loosened his hair, tied it low, hid the white strands beneath black dye.
He even made his voice just a little coarser—almost imperceptibly—so no one would recognize it when he spoke.
And perhaps the most painful of all…
He sealed his memory palace.
All the knowledge of a God—mathematics, sciences, languages, techniques, arts, medicine—
he locked it in a mental vault, hidden from even himself.
"No more remembering every answer," he whispered.
"No more perfection. No more genius. Just… me."
His uncle took him to a quiet villa in Seoul. A house house near the river, no security, no smart systems.
There, Haochen—now simply Mu Yichen—enrolled as a second-year transfer student at Hanseong High School.
No one knew who he was.
His records were fabricated to show average scores. His physical performance? Just passable.
He made mistakes on purpose. He took longer to read. He let his feet stumble during P.E.
He even failed a quiz just to feel what failure was like.
And it felt good.
Real.
At lunch, no one offered him a seat.
He didn't mind.
He sat beneath the tree in the courtyard,
watching the clouds, listening to students laugh,
and letting the sound of life wash over him.
That was when he saw her.
A girl with thick-rimmed glasses, a scarf that hid half her face, and long sleeves even in warm weather. She walked alone, head down, her tray balanced carefully in her hands. The others didn't seem to see her—or chose not to.
Their eyes met for a brief second.
She looked away.
But something in that moment shifted.
It wasn't love.
It was something far rarer.
Recognition.
As if they both carried a truth too heavy to speak aloud.
That night, Yichen sat by the river outside his new home.
No instruments. No notebooks. No blueprints.
Just the night sky and its stars.
"What if I never become him again?" he whispered.
There was no answer.
But for once…
he didn't need one.
Because the stars didn't care who he was.
They didn't know his name.
And that, for the first time, made him feel free.